Racing Pennies

Sometimes it’s been hard not to hear the start of a poem when I’m out walking these days. And too many people have been saying nice things about my poems and encouraging me to write more (soon they will learn their mistake! muahaha): so, another poem I was fiddling around with.

two pennies racing
down that vortex wishing well:
whirling round, at times the dance is
a lover’s waltz cautious, sometimes
the dance of two fencers, testing;
or an elliptical orbit of planets,
now in sunshine, now in shade,
no words needed to direct
where this circling will
end—ever a little closer
into each other
heart racing
they circle,
wheeling
whrrrr—
plunk!
at the end they fall together,
gravity-drawn beyond the event horizon.

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5 Responses to “Racing Pennies”

Cool! I like the visual representation of the vortex given by the formatting of the words, and the tempo of the poem captures the sound of all those coins you and Ethan used to send down the donations vortex at the library. Thanks for sharing.

I thought you’d like the visual shape of it :) I thought about the donation vortex at the library a lot too. But really it was mostly an artifact of the sound I wanted the lines to have. I spent a fair bit of time trying to get them paced the way I wanted, trying to echo that looping sound that rises in intensity as they fall. Hopefully it conveys well enough what I wanted to convey!

Bio

The name's Ellen Rockett. I'm a digital designer and I strive to be unique at every chance. I'm an acknowledged lover of geek things.

I started this blog in 2009 to document my time studying at the Bauhaus in Germany, and it's kept going since then: I feature my projects and document my daily life, travel, and photography excursions.